‘Four-to-six weeks’ - Newcastle United injury boost for Aston Villa as £25m man suffers set-back

Defender Fabian Schar missed the final three pre-season matches for Newcastle after being withdrawn with a hamstring issue in the 1-1 draw against Chelsea in the Premier League Summer Series. But after the 31-year-old returned to training this week, Howe appeared confident that the player will be involved this weekend.

“As we currently stand, yes he will be [involved],” the Newcastle boss said in his pre-match press conference. “He has trained this week, he has trained well. He was back with us on Tuesday so he’s had a full week’s training.”

Two players who won’t be involved this weekend and for the opening weeks of the season are Emil Krafth and Joe Willock.

Willock has been out since pulling his hamstring in United’s penultimate match of the 2022-23 campaign against Brighton & Hove Albion back in May. After missing all of pre-season, the 23-year-old is still facing at least another month on the sidelines following a slight set-back.

“Joe has worked hard through the summer after a really bad hamstring injury,” Howe added. “It was a serious injury to his hamstring where he missed the back end of last season and now in pre-season as he’s working back he’s just felt a little bit of discomfort in his hamstring, not necessarily another pull to the area but just a discomfort.

“So we’ve just had to work him down again and he’s in the process now of building back up. We’ll probably miss him for the first group of games before the international break.”

Meanwhile, Krafth continues his recovery following an ACL injury picked up almost a year ago.

“He’s doing well,” Howe continued. “As you have with serious injuries like the one he’s had, you have good days, bad days, he’s had good spells and bad spells where he hasn’t felt so good. But he’s slowly coming into a really good feeling in his body where he’s worked incredibly hard.

“Emil is a fantastic character who we’ve missed greatly both as a character and as a player. He’s not training with the team yet, he’s in very early stages with the sports science team so we’re probably looking at four-to-six weeks before he’s training with the team.”